1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is a method and system for measuring a set of shopper behavior metrics that represent the strength of a product category or a group of categories in the performance of a store area, capturing images of the people in the vicinity of categories in a store area by a plurality of means for capturing images, such as cameras, processing the input images in order to analyze the behavior of the people, and computing the behavior metrics in consideration of the category performance in a store area.
2. Background of the Invention
Product category management has been recognized as an important process in stocking a necessary amount of the demanded products on the shelves in retail stores to maximize sales. For example, U.S. Pat. Appl. Pub. No. 2003/0083925 of Weaver, et al. (hereinafter Weaver) disclosed an automated product data collection system that enables retailers to make more informed decisions with regard to the procurement, stocking, and advertising of products. Weaver discussed the importance of the sophisticated product management analysis as influencing to the product sales and customer satisfaction level. Weaver is an exemplary prior art that requires an intelligent category strength measurement in order to produce better category assessment results. However, Weaver does not disclose methods of measuring the strength of categories in a store area.
There has been no prior attempt at measuring the strength of a category at retail in the manner proposed in the present invention, i.e., based on video analytics for the images captured by means for capturing images, such as cameras. The following prior arts employ alternative technologies, like Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), for determining the effectiveness of various in-store elements, but they do not make a reference about measuring the strength of a category in a retail environment.
U.S. Pat. Appl. Pub. No. 2008/0005045 of Sorensen, et al. (hereinafter Sorensen) disclosed a system and method to analyze shopper data from various shopping environments for determining the exposure ratings of media such as product advertisements and displays. The measures evaluated to arrive at exposure ratings were shopper density, shopper flow, and transaction information.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,563,423 of Smith disclosed a location tracking system to track the movements of customers. This tracking is used to determine a customer's pace, how long a customer stayed at a particular location, and to determine how many customers passed a location. The purchase of a customer is determined by reading the tagged code at the time of purchase and relating this to whether or not the customer visited a particular display earlier.
U.S. Pat. Appl. Pub. No. 2006/0015408 of Brown describes a product purchase and sales tracking system comprising an RFID tag that is being placed on a product to be tracked, two RFID readers detecting the purchase of the product from the point of purchase and generating a time-stamp, and at least one tracking server programmed to identify in real-time the purchase of the product.
The present invention differs from the above inventions in its ability to define and measure the strength of a category and a group of categories in a store area in maximizing sales in the particular store area. Further, the present invention provide's an objective, unified framework for measuring the strength of a category and a group of categories in a store area, based on a set of shopper response attributes, including behavior analysis, impression level, and emotional change. The rating is further analyzed based on the segmentation data of shoppers, such as demographics, which can be calculated based on an application of automatic computer vision algorithms to the images of shoppers. The rating is conducted by employing automated and semi-automated video-based analysis that involves computer vision technologies.
The present invention addresses the gap by devising a scalable rating system that truly measures the strength of a category and a group of categories in a store area, based on a set of shopper response attributes. In an exemplary embodiment, the metrics can be obtained after automatically tracking in-store shopper behavior from an entire population of shoppers to the category. In this embodiment, the depth and breadth of information obtained from the present invention will be very effective for determining the strength of a category.
Conventionally, companies in prior arts conduct manual in-store observation studies to obtain information about factors impacting sales and promotion performance for categories. The insights obtained from the studies may be useful for understanding retailer compliance to promotional programs, etc., but do not provide any information on shopper behavior with respect to a category. However, the present invention provides a unified framework for rating the strength of a category and a group of categories in a store area based on a set of shopper response metrics. The employment of automated and semi-automated video-based analysis involving computer vision technologies facilitates data gathering from the entire population of shoppers that visit the category, providing in-depth insights.